Dame Eileen Atkins tells Dame Helen Mirren: 'it’s good to be bad'

Dame Eileen Atkins believes a “real actor” would always relish the chance to
be the baddie - despite Dame Helen Mirren saying she considered it
“unfortunate” that the villain in every American film tended to be played by
a Briton.

Dame Eileen AtkinsPhoto: Getty Images

By Tim Walker

10:00PM BST 10 May 2010

“I much prefer to play the villain,” Dame Eileen tells Mandrake. “Who wants to play the goodie? I really didn’t want the part they gave me in Cranford because she was such a good woman. I thought: 'Give me one of the ones who gossip.’

"If you’re a real actor you always want to play the villain.

“Americans like to be liked, but I couldn’t care less if people like me or not. We have a few actors who like to be liked, too, of course.”

Addressing an audience in Los Angeles last month, Dame Helen had felt it necessary to put Americans right about how different the British are from the “snooty, stuck-up, malevolent creatures” that they are so often portrayed as on screen. “We’re actually kind of cool and hip,” she insisted.

Dame Eileen, who recently served on the judging panel for the Sheridan Morley Prize for Best Theatre Biography, is as good as her word. She will next be seen on the screen in Wild Target which opens in June.